Trump's Defense Budget May Be A Feast Of Overspending

Charles Tiefer
, ContributorI cover government contracting, the Pentagon and Congress.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

US Secretary of Defense James Mattis waits to greet US President Donald Trump at the Pentagon January 18, 2018 in Washington. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2019 budget request swallows up $686 billion for defense, which the national debt can ill afford after last year’s massive tax cut for the well-off. Not enough news coverage has been devoted to this enormous defense budget, which has two main overspending tendencies: It goes ahead with the bloated, roughly $1.25 trillion nuclear triad updating, and it takes on the splurge of arming for potential conventional wars with Russia and China.

These heavy loads of spending contrast with the tight diet for such needs as curbing global warming or helping to fund states and localities with infrastructure.

Here are some highlights:

The bloated nuclear triad update consists of modernizing the Cold War’s missiles, nuclear submarines and strategic bombers, plus replacing older nuclear warheads with newer models. Do we really think we’re going to be fighting a bigger-than-ever all-out nuclear war with Russia or China? Does it matter whether we kill 100 million Russians or 150 million? Russia is itself near broke from Crimea-related sanctions and oil and gas prices kept down by American shale products.

Yet we’re buying. The Navy wants two Virginia Class submarines, costing $7.4 billion. It wants new B-21 strike bombers, costing $2.3 billion. These are both relatively new weapons that may well have huge cost overruns ahead.

The nuclear warhead agency is getting $17.1 billion. And that may be just the tip of the iceberg. The Governmental Accountability Office has said the agency is understating what it must spend for today’s aspirations. And it could be that this FY-2019 budget for the agency is laying the groundwork for a big plus-up next year. Does it really matter whether we modernize enough to wipe out just a humongous number of Russian cities or instead to wipe out twice as many? It is a shame that Trump’s fawning favoritism toward Vladimir Putin in every other matter does not inspire him to some frugality with the nuclear warhead budget.

Then there’s the heavy spending for conventional fighting. Do we really think that we’re going to have full-scale conventional wars with Russia and China and that no one will reach for the nukes in their back pocket? But we’re buying. We would spend $10.7 billion for 77 more F-35 joint strike fighters. These painfully expensive F-35s have been swelling budgets for years, as construction occurs in states and districts with influential members of Congress. But now the spending on them is over the top. They have had endless troubles during production. We would buy three DDG-51 destroyers, for $6 billion. That’s a lot of money.

Let’s not forget a little gift for Trump himself. We would buy six new presidential helicopters for $900 million. A whole new fleet for him? Our other elected national leaders, like those in the House and Senate, manage to do without these.

More will be said on this topic as the defense budget makes its way through Congress. There is just not enough coverage of this so far. Perhaps Trump has fooled the public into thinking this funding is going to our troops in Afghanistan or fighting Isis. It’s not.